Weather in Denver, an exchange between Steve and Chrissy, and a poem by Steve "Tell it Nothing is"
“The temperature in Denver is around 62 degrees right now with the wind at least 13 miles an hour…”
~
“You’ve shaken my world, Chrissy.”
She was naked, laying in their sweat. The bedsheet partly covered her body. Steve was standing by the window with boxers on, absorbing the city’s view at night.
“Where have you been all my life?” she asked.
He lit a cigarette, eyes still out the window. “With another woman.”
“Just one?” the girl wondered. “She must’ve been a lucky one.”
“She still is.”
Tell It Nothing Is
A poem by Steve
What is happening is the isolation of reason.
It is unnatural, processed, and reproduced.
Say “nothing is real” to the child’s mind,
Tell it the world is a puzzle
And when you get it all together…
You die. You die to understand
Why the puzzle seemed so interesting.
For the mind will ask, “what is mind?”
And “why is this existence spinning?
If it’s only spinning to eventually not spin?”
What is happening is the isolation of reason
It is organized, systematic, and of rusting steel.
Say “nothing is real” to the child’s mind,
Tell it the world is its muzzle
And if you ever break from such a prison…
You will find there’s nothing to bite.
For the mind will ask, “what is mind?”
And “why is your mouth still moving?”
To be continued...
© USA 2009, 2025
This was the ninteenth part of a cross-genre short story composed in 2009 at the College of Santa Fe.